


Don't Fear the Reaper

by mahoni



Category: Discworld, Supernatural
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Angst, Crossover/Fusion, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-29
Updated: 2006-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a near Death experience. Set between <i>Crossroad Blues</i> and <i>Croatoan</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Fear the Reaper

The snarling and shouting and shooting had moved elsewhere, and the little glade was peaceful. Gray shadows and leafless black trees and shrubs stood stiff against the white snow. Splashes of red cratered the snow's crust here and there, adding a bit of zing to the palette.

Sam tracked the churned-up, bloodied trail of snow with his eyes until it disappeared over a nearby hill. Dean had crested the hill and vanished, too, all in the time it had taken Sam to say "oh, wait, maybe I'm not okay" and sit back down very hard in the snow.

Although, he may not have said it out loud. Shoving to his feet with the intent to follow Dean after the Yeti, the first thing he'd noticed was a sudden lack of being able to breathe, followed by a lot of pain and a lack of being able to remain standing up. With all of that going on, it was possible he'd only managed to think the words.

That had happened...how long ago? Sam pulled himself together mentally (which actually took some effort; his head felt full of the heavy gray clouds lowering in the sky) and took stock. He'd been on the ground long enough for his ass to go numb in the snow. Long enough to get pretty comfortable despite the knobbly, twisted tree at his back.

A tree that seemed to be giving off heat, because he was, he realized incrementally, he was, he was very, he was weirdly, nicely, really kind of pleasantly warm. It also might be a poisonous tree, because he -- at this point he took a moment to check, and, crap, this could be a problem -- he couldn't convince any part of himself to move.

Which meant Dean, Dean had been gone...a little while, anyway. Sam knew Dean would be fine taking on the Yeti alone, partly because they'd managed to shoot it full of a shitload of silver before it tossed Sam into the tree and ran off, but mostly because Dean could pretty much take on anything alone. Except for things on airplanes, of course, but that'd only happened the once.

Dean wouldn't notice Sam wasn't with him right away, though, because Sam had said he'd be there. _I'm fine, go, I'll be right behind you._ So why wouldn't Sam be there, right? Him and Dean, they say they'll be there, they're there.

_I suck_, Sam thought.

The only thing that made him feel the least bit better about the fact that he was sprawled on his ass under a tree instead of backing up his brother like he'd said he would was the fact that he didn't exactly have much to offer the fight at this point anyway, other than possibly distracting the Yeti by falling down a lot.

He stared at the snow, and got lost in thought. Normally at a time like this, he'd be thinking that if he was supposed to have Dean's back then he should get off his ass and find Dean, regardless of how much falling down he had to do to get there. But thinking was hard. Instead, he listened to the silence. Every now and then a clump of snow slipped from a tree branch and hit the ground with a muffled fwump. Other than that, the only other sound was a soft, butterfly-soft, skritching, like twigs rubbing together in a breeze.

The icy air stung Sam's eyes. He let them close; his eyelids felt thick and stiff. The skritching sound almost had a beat -- _skritch skritch skritch pause...skritch skritch pause...skritch pause skritch skritch...._ It was a little like those nature tapes Jonna Davit had let him fall asleep to when he was little, that time their dad left them with her and disappeared for almost a whole month in Massachusetts.

A thought squirmed up, clambering over the soothing sound like it was a bridge over a bottomless pit, and without bothering to explain why pointed out that Dean would kick Sam's ass from there to next Tuesday if he fell asleep right now.

Sam bitched silently back at the thought, but forced his eyes open anyway, just in case it was right. He had to blink a few times before he could see again, and blink a few more times before his brain and his eyes reconnected.

A facet of the landscape he hadn't previously been paying attention to bleared slowly into focus. Now that he saw it, he wondered how he could possibly have missed seeing it before.

The skeleton sat cross-legged on the snow nearby, wrapped in a hooded black cloak. One bony (no, really, literally bony) hand held a large sketch pad steady on its lap; the skritching sound Sam had thought was twigs came from a stick of charcoal being drawn across the page in short, quick strokes.

It looked up and noticed him noticing it. It didn't have eyes, exactly, but the small blue lights shining in the empty sockets still somehow left Sam with the definite impression of being seen.

It picked up the sketch pad and turned it so Sam could see what it had been drawing.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Sam felt more than heard the voice, which was deep and echoing and strange, but not nearly as strange as the drawing.

"It's..." he said, and then had to stop and work the numbness out of his lips before he could continue. Which was okay, because he had no idea what say, because what it was, was a kitten. An extraordinarily fuzzy, fluffy tabby kitten, sitting with its little kitten tail curled around its dainty toes, with its wide kitten eyes promising death. Death to dust bunnies and untied shoelaces, maybe, but still, death.

Sam cleared his throat. "It's nice," he managed to slur.

The skeleton continued to watch him. Clearly, it expected more in the way of feedback.

"It's very...expressive?" Sam said.

The skeleton considered the drawing, skull cocked to the side thoughtfully. I THOUGHT PERHAPS I SHOULD DRAW A BALL OF YARN WITH IT.

"Yarn," Sam said. "Would be very...appropriate?"

It nodded vaguely, apparently satisfied with Sam's answer, and went back to drawing.

'It.' Probably Sam insisted on thinking of it as 'it' because he was in denial. Although, maybe it wasn't a reaper. True, it looked like it had stepped out of a woodcut in any number of their old reference books, what with the cloak and the hood and being a skeleton, and, oh yes, that was in fact a long-handled scythe lying on the ground beside it.

On the other hand, he and Dean had established by way of personal experience (Dean's personal experience, at any rate) that reapers didn't look like that. And also, the kitten drawing bothered Sam a little. Even granting that a reaper might need a hobby, and that it might therefore take up drawing, wouldn't it choose topics that were a little more...reapery? Or at least ones that were less cute and fluffy?

A gnarled bit of tree root was digging into Sam's tailbone. He shifted, and agony flared in his midsection, flushing through the rest of him in a rush of icy cold that set his fingers and toes prickling with pins and needles. He gritted his teeth, wrapping his arms more tightly around himself, trying to breathe through the pain.

The pain didn't entirely fade, but after a while he got used to it. He dropped his chin to his chest, sighing weakly, and relaxed his arms.

His coat and pants were covered with wet splotches from having rolled around in the snow, so as he stared down the length of himself the big wet blotch on his coat, front and left of center, wouldn't necessarily have rated a second look. Only, his cast, where his sleeve didn't cover it, was stained ruby red. So were his fingers, when he lifted his hand to take a closer look.

"Shit," he said.

IS THERE A PROBLEM?

He froze. The...skeleton, the thing, whatever it was, had set aside its charcoal and was looking at him curiously. Or possibly politely. Sam really couldn't tell; its facial expressions ranged from ominously grinning, to ominously grinning with head tilted, and were really no help at all.

He stared blankly back at it. "Is there. What?" he said.

It gestured at his bloodied arm. YOU SEEM UPSET.

Sam managed to transfer his blank stare from its flickering blue eye sockets to his hand, but was drawn inexorably back into its gaze. "Oh. Right." Upset. Because, blood. His brain stuttered to a stop in the face of the skeleton's undivided attention, so his mouth said the first thing that came to it. "I'm not supposed to get my cast wet."

They stared at each other for a moment.

AH, it said eventually. It tore the kitten-and-yarn picture from the sketchpad and set it beside the scythe on the snow, saying, I THOUGHT PERHAPS THE DEEP GASHES IN YOUR ABDOMEN WERE CAUSING YOU SOME CONCERN. I WAS MISTAKEN.

It set to sketching a new picture then, and Sam spent several minutes being very glad to be ignored again before thinking, _wait_.

He plucked at his sodden coat and found the tears, and found that they went right through his coat, and through his sweatshirt, and his button-down shirt, and his t-shirt, and his other t-shirt, and his long underwear shirt, and shit.

"Shit, shit, shit," he said, and then noticed that a narrow halo of snow around his hip had gone slushy with blood. "_Shit_."

And honestly, he'd thought he'd hit the tree pretty high up, and you just don't get that kind of air without some lift, and what the hell is a Yeti anyway but a freaking mutant gorilla with huge-ass claws --

THANK GOODNESS FOR LAYERS, the skeleton said without looking up from its drawing. BUT LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE.

Sam gritted his teeth again and pressed his arm against his side, and commanded his brain to start processing. 'Could have been worse'? What did that even _mean_? Because coming from something that may or may not be a reaper, that may or may not be an extremely loaded statement.

Even if it was a reaper, it had so far forgone reaping him in favor of drawing kittens, and he should really just continue to _let_ it do that, rather than drawing attention to its purpose. But that was his problem: he couldn't just let things go. He had to know, even when asking a question was just about the stupidest thing he could do. His father had had all kinds of names for that particular aspect of Sam's personality, but he generally liked to think of it as a strength. He took a shallow breath.

"Excuse me," he said, and waited until the thing gave him its attention. "Hi. Um. Hello. I wondered. Are you a reaper?"

YES.

"...oh." As it turned out, hearing it confirmed sucked.

"But. It's just that." Sam's fingers were very cold. And sticky. And he wondered how long Dean was going to take with that Yeti. "It's just that, my brother saw a reaper, well, two, but he only remembered the one, and you don't look anything like...."

The reaper was limited in the range of facial expressions it could manage, true; but Sam discovered that what it lacked in tendons and muscles and skin it could make up for in atmosphere. The sky, as the reaper gazed at him, grew measurably darker, and the cold colder.

It would be best, he decided, just this once, to accept the reaper's traditional appearance as a matter of individual style and move on. He cleared his throat weakly before speaking again.

"So," he said. "Kittens?"

It made a noncommittal sound. The sky undarkened, mostly, although a few black clouds lingered pointedly at the horizon's edge. The reaper went back to drawing, but it was keeping an eye on him now.

The funny thing was that Sam didn't feel any closer to dead than he had any other time he'd had a set of broken ribs or been sliced open by some creature's claws. The pain burned and stabbed and throbbed with the normal intensity. His head buzzed a little from blood loss, but again, no more than was usual. Even the cold wasn't getting to him any more -- that is, he could feel the cold again; no more of the false warmth of imminent freezing to death. He was pretty sure he had the reaper to thank for that, actually. Nothing like a shot of mindless panic to jump-start the central nervous system.

On the other hand, it admitted it was a reaper. There was no one around to trade their life for his. And, all things considered, it was probably fair to say that this reaper had a legitimate reason for being there, as opposed to being controlled by some psycho with a medallion he could smash. So.

"I'm going to die, aren't I."

EVENTUALLY.

"My brother is going to be pissed at me if I die." Among other things. The thought made it hard to breathe again. Or maybe that was still the broken ribs.

INDEED.

"He'll think he -- I should have --" _I totally and completely suck_, Sam thought. "I didn't know I was really hurt. There was no reason for him not to believe me when I said I'd catch up."

PERHAPS HE WILL UNDERSTAND.

Sam considered how well his brother tended to accept death when it happened to someone other than Dean himself. "No, he won't." Sam hugged himself tightly and clung to the pain. "You don't know Dean."

ACTUALLY, I HAVE NEARLY MET HIM SEVERAL TIMES, it said. HOWEVER, I HAVE BEEN STUDYING HUMAN INTERACTION, AND HAVE FOUND THAT IN THESE SITUATIONS ONE IS EXPECTED TO OFFER FALSE PLATITUDES. It glanced at him. IS THAT NOT CORRECT?

Sam blinked. "Uh. Well, no. I mean, yes. I guess." Was he giving a reaper advice on social interaction? "Some people do appreciate well-meaning, er, lies. Platitudes."

The reaper returned to putting the finishing touches on its second drawing, and Sam wondered how many more it would do before it decided to get down to business. Between the drawing and the kittens and the...well, everything about this reaper, Sam felt completely off balance, but that hadn't gotten in the way of fear taking him over. Also, since he was a great big fucking _girl_, his eyes kept filling up with tears. He swiped them dry with a bloody hand.

He didn't want to die. Ever since Jess died, he'd had no idea what he was living for. The life he'd dreamed of having died with her; the life he was left with he still didn't want. And then his dad had died, and since then he had been trying to live his dad's dream, and his brother's, but it was still an awkward fit, and the demon and the psychic thing jumbled it all up anyway -- but he didn't want to _die_. Not until he figured things out, at least.

And besides, leaving Dean alone like that?

A very small voice at the back of his mind pointed out that lately Dean seemed to be running toward death himself. The very small voice noted that if Dean had his way, Sam would be alone. _Fuck him_, it said. _One of these days he's going to ditch you; this is your chance to do it first_.

He almost bought it. For maybe a minute, he let himself believe that if he had to die anyway, then being glad not to be the last Winchester standing wasn't selfish at all.

And then the reaper stopped drawing suddenly and went still, and the minute was up.

"No," Sam said, but the reaper wasn't paying any attention to him.

It seemed to be listening for something. Sam strained to hear, but as far as he could tell there was nothing but the whisper of a breeze in the treetops.

The reaper pocketed the stick of charcoal. THAT'S MY CUE.

"Wait," Sam said.

But it was pointless, wasn't it? What could he say that would convince a reaper to spare him? Don't take me away from my brother, he's all I've got? He's all I've ever really had? He could imagine the reaper's response to that. _CRY ME A RIVER, CHUMP_.

He watched the reaper tear the second drawing from the sketch pad and tuck the pad away into its robe. It didn't stand up so much as flow into an upright position; its robe shook out around it with a muffled sound like the beating of a hundred wings.

One hand held the drawing and the other held the scythe, although Sam hadn't seen it pick it up. His eyes were blurring again, and all the blinking he was doing to clear them meant he wasn't seeing everything that happened. Like, suddenly the reaper had crossed the short distance between them and was standing over him: he hadn't seen that happen.

From somewhere far away, he heard himself talking.

"Are you sure you're a reaper?" he was saying. "I mean, the bones, the robe, the scythe, it's kind of a cliché, right? And while supernatural beings don't generally have a sense of humor I figure there's always a first time for everything, right? So this could be a big joke?"

He was babbling, insulting this thing up, down and sideways, and he couldn't stop. Where the hell was Dean? He knew they couldn't kill a reaper, but if Dean would just come back maybe they could figure something out together --

"Oh, wait, wait, did the demon put you up to this? That dude seems to have a sense of humor. A really sick sense of humor, actually. Or maybe, maybe - Dean said the reaper he saw wore a suit. And had skin. Are you just old-fashioned or something?"

He looked up into the reaper's face, and the blue stars of its eyes seemed to go supernova. Any hope he had of surviving the day died a small, preemptive death.

I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU WOULD CEASE TO BELABOR THIS MISCONCEPTION YOU SEEM TO HAVE ABOUT ME, it said, a distinctly irritated edge sharpening its voice.

He'd pissed off a reaper. Dean would be so proud. Hysteria tried to bubble up in a giggle, but he bit his tongue until he tasted blood. Sam considered himself a relatively brave person, and yet still not brave enough to laugh in the face of death.

I AM THE REAPER, it said.

Black clouds billowed in the sky above it, framing its hooded face in darkness. Sam stared at it, locked in wordless fear.

After a moment, the reaper sighed, and the black clouds subsided a bit. I AM NOT MAKING MYSELF CLEAR. LET ME SAY THIS AGAIN.

I AM THE REAPER.

This time Sam was pretty sure he heard a capital R in the sentence. Possibly also a capital T-H-E. He tried to puzzle it out, but the Reaper was watching him expectantly.

"Okay," he squeaked. "...but...."

The Reaper thumped its scythe impatiently on the ground, causing several clumps of snow to slip from the branches above it. The snow knew better than to land on the Reaper, however. In a possible show of fealty one clump actually appeared to swerve on its way down in order to bullseye Sam in the shoulder.

LOOK, the Reaper said. THE CREATURES YOUR BROTHER SAW ARE, FRANKLY, NOTHING MORE THAN DELUSIONAL SPIRITS. THEY SAW DEATH WHEN THEY LIVED, AND DECIDED THAT MEANT THEY WOULD BECOME DEATH WHEN THEY DIED. THERE ARE, OF COURSE, RULES ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING, BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS WHEN PEOPLE GET IDEAS IN THEIR HEADS.

It rested the scythe beside Sam against the tree, and Sam tried like hell not to flinch.

IN ESSENCE, YES, THEY KILL. BUT THERE IS ONLY ONE DEATH.

It knelt in front of Sam then, its robes pooling around it with a rustle like brittle leaves. Sam caught a scent of ash, and his mouth went dry. He tasted dust.

AND WHEN IT IS TIME FOR ME TO CHOOSE MY SUCCESSOR, IT CERTAINLY WILL NOT BE ONE OF THEM. HONESTLY. A MORE POMPOUS, ARROGANT BUNCH OF...NO RESPECT FOR THE ORDER OF THINGS....

It trailed off, gazing thoughtfully at the picture it held.

YOU ARE NOT LIKE THEM, SAM WINCHESTER.

Sam managed to swallow once, but couldn't force out anything more than a whisper. "I'm not?"

It shook its head slowly, in a way that implied Death liked to have the last word and, generally, did.

I AM A GOOD JUDGE OF CHARACTER. AFTER ALL, I HAVE MET MANY PEOPLE, AND AT THEIR MOST AWKWARD MOMENT.

It reached for him, taking an eternity to do so, and a strange feeling rippled through Sam. It didn't drown the fear, just edged it aside for a moment. It was a feeling like when you catch sight of movement out of the corner of your eye but you're too distracted to look and see what it is.

\- _burned away on the ceiling; suffocated in a car; decapitated by a window; consumed by gasoline-fed flames_ -

"Hey," he said softly. "Have we met before?"

The Reaper's hand paused inches from his chest. Then, without answering, it opened its hand.

The picture alighted on Sam's lap weightlessly. He risked a glance.

It was not another kitten. The Reaper had drawn itself. The hooded, paper-white skull looked up at him from the page. Even though Sam hadn't seen the Reaper use anything but black charcoal, blue pinpoints of light blazed in the darkness of the image's eye sockets.

It was a skilled portrait of Death. Sam's eyes were blurry from the cold, the pain, and the fear, though; that was the only reason he thought he saw the shadow of his own face sketched, ghost-like, over the skull.

He heard the scythe sing as Death took hold of it and lifted it away from the tree. This time, as it stood, the sound of Death's robes falling into place was like the crunch of snow under running feet.

"SAM."

Death grinned down at him and began to fade. Everything faded except, unexpectedly, the cold and the pain. Those things grew.

"_SAM!_"

The hands that clutched at his face were warm and alive.

"Dammit, Sam, wake up!"

Sam opened his eyes. As pale as Dean was in the washed-out winter afternoon, he was definitely _Dean_.

Sam grabbed at Dean's coat with frozen, blood-slicked fingers and clutched it tight, just to make sure. The leather was icy cold, but real.

He tried to say "I'm awake" but his face had gone numb from the cold again. He looked past Dean, and he twisted as much as he could trying to look around the tree. Nothing. No thing. No Reaper. There was no drawing on his lap, either, only a dusting of dirt-smudged snow. "Dean," he managed.

Dean had tugged up Sam's ruined coat and shirts and was swearing a blue streak at what he found underneath. When Sam caught his arm and slurred "Dean!" at him again, he just scowled and moved to haul Sam to his feet.

Sam shook him off without actually letting go. "Dean! Stop! Jus' wait." Because Sam had to say it, right there, out loud, partly because he couldn't believe it, and partly because he had to find out if something was going to snap its fingers, make Dean disappear, and say PSYCH -- "Dean, 'm okay."

There was silence. Sam rode it out, holding onto his brother, keeping an eye out for shadows moving in his periphery.

Again, nothing. Nothing happened at all, except that Dean's expression wavered a little, and softened into a mix of hopeless fear and relief and other things Dean would rather drive the car off a cliff than admit to feeling. It was an expression Sam had seen maybe a dozen times ever before their father died, and since then had seen a lot. It lasted about a second before hardening back into the Angry Big Brother of Doom look.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean smacked Sam's hands away. "Stop telling me you're okay when you are obviously not okay! Obvious to anyone who isn't six foot four inches of _stupid_, anyway -"

Pulling Sam's arm over his shoulder, Dean gently eased him up. It took almost everything Sam had not to pass out, and then took what was left to breathe around the crushing agony in his chest. He must have gone completely glassy-eyed and zombie-faced, because Dean was babbling, which he only ever did when he felt completely and utterly helpless and didn't think Sam was coherent enough to notice.

"You son of a bitch. You goddamned son of a bitch. I left you here, Sam, I didn't check to make sure you were okay, and you could have bled to death, or frozen to death, or -- Jesus _Christ_, Sammy, you son of a _bitch_."

Dean cussed him out under his breath all the way to the car. By the time they got there, Sam was torn between wanting his brother to stop freaking out and start joking around like he usually did, and feeling very, very loved.

He slumped in the passenger seat of the car, and focused on catching his breath. Dean had gone quiet, digging around in the glove compartment for one of the pressure bandages they'd swiped from the hospital where Sam got his arm set.

"Busted ribs?" Dean said, ripping the bandage out of the package.

Sam started to shrug, thought better of it. "Think so."

Dean shook his head. "Another trip to a goddamned hospital," he muttered.

Sam hissed when Dean pressed the bandage over as much of the wounded area as it would cover.

"Dean," he said, trying not to gasp as he shifted his arm to hold the bandage in place. "Saw something." Pulling together enough breath to talk was really hard. He wondered how he'd managed so well back in the woods, with the Reaper. Possibly he'd just passed out and dreamed the conversation. On the other hand, given the way their lives tended to work out, it was more likely that the explanation was something less mundane.

Like, maybe he really had been that close to Death.

"You saw something in the woods?" Dean said.

Sam started to say _Reaper_, but then remembered the whole reaper versus REAPER distinction, and everything that implied; and also, frankly, if he started talking about charcoal drawings of kittens right now Dean would just accuse him of being delirious anyway. He shook his head. "Talk about it later."

Dean gave him look. "You sure?"

Sam nodded.

"It's not something I need to come back and kill while you're getting stitched up?"

Sam stifled a laugh and shook his head.

Dean shrugged. "Fine. You can tell me later."

Before moving off, though, he reached up and cupped Sam's cheek with his hand, and Sam could see a lot of things in his eyes that reminded him of the, god, far too many times he'd nearly lost his brother in just the last year alone. Then he thought about that split second when he'd sat and watched the Reaper draw and had wanted to die himself.

He gripped Dean's wrist with his free hand. "'m sorry," he said, and desperately hoped Dean wouldn't ask him to explain that later too.

Dean pulled his hand away, and his face went blank, but not before Sam saw enough to know that Dean probably didn't need an explanation.

"Yeah, well." Dean stood up. "You know if you ever die on me, I'll track you down and kick your ass from here to next Tuesday."

Sam almost smiled. He let his head drop back against the seat and closed his eyes. "Punk."

"Asshole."

The door banged shut.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Death really does like [kittens](http://www.ie.lspace.org/books/whos-who/death.html).


End file.
